International Development
Evaluation Association
Denis Jobin
Vice-President
IDEAS
Brief History
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Informal discussions between the World Bank and the UNDP ;
London Meeting : more than 40 development evaluation
professionals
Resulted : ‘London Declaration on the Establishment of IDEAS’
on May 8th 2001;
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Established an Interim Steering Committee (ISC)
IDEAS was launched on September 8th 2002 in Beijing
IDEAS was formally established at the beginning of 2003 when
it was registered with the Charities Commission of England and
Wales as charity
IDEAS’ Mission and Mandate
Mission:
The advancement of education for the public benefit in the
theories, methods and practice of evaluation;
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in order to improve and expand the capacity for understanding
and standards of evaluation predominantly in developing
countries. (…)’’
Wide range of power and activity:
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Establish databank, provide award, funding, carry out research,
produce, publish any form of material
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to award annual prizes for outstanding contributions to the study of
the theories, methodology and practice of evaluation ;
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to organise or make grants towards the cost of others organising
meetings, lectures, conferences, broadcasts or courses of
instruction;
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More than 29 additional powers
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What needs are we addressing?
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Context: Need to demonstrate results, accountability and
impacts
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Monterey consensus-MDGs;
Requirements for evidences based policies/programs
Paris Declaration
IDEAS an Evaluation Association for development professional
evaluators and individuals interested in Development evaluation who
do not necessarily have such association in their country and who face
various challenges related to the professional practices of Evaluation:
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IDEAS : a response to development professional evaluators needs:
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Evaluation Capacity Development (ECD): training, bursaries, workshops;
Knowledge producer; e-news, workshops, bi-annual conference;
Networking opportunities.
IDEAS as a mean to bring developing and transition countries professional
evaluators perspectives up-front of development issues
What needs are we addressing?
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Recent IDEAS evaluation (2006) concluded that the
association :
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‘is highly relevant to the evaluation community in that it fills
an identified need to support ‘isolated’ evaluation
professionals, to be a platform for convening key players in
development evaluation and for advocating change, and as
an instrument of capacity building.’
IDEAS key achievements
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IDEAS Website
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E-News
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Up graded in 2005 to improved appearance, speed and usability;
Membership instant payment and web based is appreciated
Will be up-graded in 2007 as well: search function
The first Bi-annual was a good opportunity to launch the first
IDEAS e-news;
Up-dated IDEAS Brochure to reflect new thinking
IDEAS made contributions to the DAC-OECD (partnership
conference in 2003).
IDEAS key achievements to date
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Organized Panel sessions (Washington, 2003);
Participated in Evaluation conferences
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2004 Co-hosted with Parliamentary Center (Cambodia)
Workshop on PPP in South Africa;
IDEAS was represented regional seminar in Southern Africa (Nelson Mandela
Foundation)
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2005 CES-AEA: IDEAS was represented at the event and hosted
a networking event
2006 UKES: IDEAS was represented and participated at a panel
2006 IPEN: IDEAS was represented and presented a paper
2006: DAC-OECD meetings : Standards related to GPP;
2006: CLE workshop- Prague, Czech Republic
2007 Afrea - Niamey: IDEAS was represented and organized a
Workshop on Country Led evaluation ;
2007 (May) IDEAS-RELAC Joint conference;
IDEAS key achievements to date
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Being member-driven: the Cairo workshop
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More than 25 member-based proposals were examined
and assessed;
The need to understand better how country-led
approaches (Prague, Niamey);
The need to use IDEAS as a platform to develop and
offer incentive mechanisms that would reward leaders,
pioneers and innovators;
The need to enhance the virtual forum of exchanges
amongst members (Ideas discussion group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IDEAS-Int/).
Some challenges
Moving toward a permanent secretariat
Overall IDEAS level of effort is equivalent of 1 FTE;
Sustaining IDEAS performance
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Recruitment and retention of members: Membership
strategy (draft)
Delivering value-for-money and useful products and
services (P&S);
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Delivering collective P&S: excludable but non-rival;
Volunteering nature of IDEAS and level of effort
The small number problem: increasing the number of
stakeholders
Looking forwards
Planning Meeting : Montreal, January 2007
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Moving towards a Structure whereby IDEAS does not rely
solely on the voluntary efforts of its Board members
Developing more explicit by-Laws for some of our
organizational processes, in particular our Election process.
Addressing CDE needs as part of IDEAS mandate.
Some observations on Managing for
Development Results-The role of incentives
Limits of current MFDR models:
The perceived problem of MFDR is one of knowledge gap;
If individuals know how to MFDR, then they will manage for results;
Hence the multiplication of frameworks;
Un-stated flaw assumptions about human behaviour:
Interest of Individuals matches perfectly the interest of organisations;
Organisations and individuals are separate/distinct from each others.
The path forward: An approach who integrated the role of
institution who shape human interactions by providing the right
incentives for economic performance of organizations : MFDR
should be integrated with the system of sanctions and rewards
within organisation.
Denis Jobin, Vice-President, IDEAS [email protected]